


Elder Understandings

by Lilith_Valdis



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Auror Harry Potter, Biracial Harry Potter, Director of the DMLE Harry Potter, Female Harry Potter, Head Auror Harry Potter, Indian Harry Potter, Indian James Potter, It just happened ya know, Kinda Dark Lady Harry??, Master of Death Harry Potter, Personification of Death, she didn't mean to
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:39:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilith_Valdis/pseuds/Lilith_Valdis
Summary: Sometimes, the things you throw away come back to haunt your footsteps.Harika Potter, Director of the DMLE, finds this out the hard way.





	Elder Understandings

In every universe there is, infinities stacked on top of infinities, someone called Potter gives up the Elder Wand. 

Harry Potter, boy-wonder with his sad eyes, who knits together a phoenix feather and denies the power that crawls up his spine. Then, Harley Potter, who spat curses with vitriol and had gentle hands, snaps it over his knee as the Aurors drag him away. Just there, over the ridge: Hailey Potter, a heiress with smiles as thin as paper, kisses a boy with hair like fire and raises three children while a wand rots at the back of a drawer. Hyacinth Potter, Hadrian Potter, Harriet Potter; the list goes on and on and on until the close. 

How it ends is always different. She marries under the altar, he rots in a prison cell. He has a daughter with his mother’s name, she has puppet strings around her limbs colored like an unforgiving bruise. 

Sometimes, the wand comes back. Rolls under the door, appears on the corner of a desk, washes up on the riverbank. It’s rejected all the same, no matter the form it’s return takes. 

Golden-hearted Potter, with a learner’s calluses and a hero’s will, too stubborn and too _good_ to give into that temptation. 

Except here. 

Here, just before Harika Potter sets down that Elder Wand, she hesitates. Her fingers trace the worn wood and it warms like sunshine on a bright Hogwarts morning. _Home,_ it says. 

_Wouldn’t you like a home, Hari?_

Hari may be a golden lion, true, but her heart is a hungry thing. A ambitious thing. A Slytherin thing. 

And like all Slytherin things, her heart knew how to recognize an offer when it saw one. 

_Just one spell, Hari. Just one._

Maybe she would have accepted, her hunger-bitten insides ached with the possibility, but-

Dumbledore peered over those glasses at her frozen form, and Hari knew well enough that she never could. 

The wand barely made a sound when it touched the desk, but it may as well been a particularly well-aimed bombarda with how Hari’s body shook without that small weight in her hands. 

She took three steps towards the door, and her hands quivered with want. It was so _close-_

But no. Harika Potter had more power than she knew what to do with already. She needed no more. 

_But oh, silly girl, who said the only thing it gave was power?_


End file.
